


Activation Day

by Rhinozilla



Series: Detroit 07 [15]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Birthday Party, Connor Deserves Happiness, Developing Friendships, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Kinda, Protective Hank Anderson, Team Bonding, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-12
Updated: 2019-06-12
Packaged: 2020-05-02 07:31:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19194460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhinozilla/pseuds/Rhinozilla
Summary: It started out as a friendly prank, because androids don’t really have birthdays, right? But Connor is legitimately touched by his co-workers’ little ‘party,’ so all they can do is roll with it.





	Activation Day

**Author's Note:**

> I'm late to the party to celebrate DBH's first anniversary since its release, but better late than never, right? Also, I'm not done giving Connor positive interactions with his co-workers. They WILL all be friends, mark my words! This one could really be summed up as "they a little confused, but they got the spirit." XD

“That is a bad idea,” Ben plainly stated, watching the scene over the rim of his coffee mug.

Like a herd of deer, Tina, Chris, and Tina’s partner Robert Lewis all turned their heads to look at him. The three of them had been milling around Connor’s empty desk for ten minutes now, with a familiar plastic tub from the precinct’s storage closet. It had taken all of one glimpse of bright colored paper coming out of that tub for him to figure out what they were doing.

“Says you.” Tina stuck her tongue out. “I think it’s hilarious.”

Chris shifted on his feet, looking less certain now that he knew Ben had been watching. “I don’t know…It feels a little mean.”

Tina glared at him. “If it was mean, we’d have invited Gavin to help. This is not mean. These are birthday decorations.”

Ben’s eyebrow quirked up with his curiosity, and he stepped away from his desk. He was less than an hour from clocking out for the day anyway. Might as well see what they were up to.

“Androids don’t have birthdays,” he pointed out, finally seeing what they were doing. “Oh, Jesus Christ. How old are you three?”

Connor’s desk, already bare bones to the point of looking vacant, had been decorated with the leftover birthday decorations from the little shindig that the office had put together for Chris’s son’s first birthday last week. The theme had been all about the beach, since Chris and his wife had just taken Damien on his first vacation…to the beach.

So far, on re-use, that had resulted in a string of pink starfish garland taped around the perimeter of the desk, three little plastic palm trees around the keyboard, a handful of confetti in the shape of holographic seahorses, crabs, and dolphins littered across the pristine surface of the desk, a huge floral print beach towel draped over the chair, and a gently used orange candle shaped like a surfboard with the number 1 on it.

“We know that,” Robert replied with a shameless shrug. “Why do you think we got…” He whipped out a banner the size of a piece of paper. “Bam!”

The ‘banner’ was a simple, plastic sheet that read “HAPPY FIRST BIRTHDAY!” except ‘birthday’ had been covered in whiteout and “ACTIVATION DAY” had been written over it in purple marker in Tina’s scribbly handwriting.

Ben just stared at them, then slowly pointed at Connor’s disrupted desk. “Bad.” He pointed at the banner. “Idea.”

“Why? Androids may not have birthdays, but they like fun! Or, I assume they do. Ours might not, but I’ve seen other androids straight up…smile and laugh and shit,” Tina said smugly.

“Why do you think this is a bad idea?” Chris looked like he was desperate for Ben to give enough of an answer to convince his cohorts.

Ben snorted. “Connor’s not stupid, and he was THERE at Damien’s party. He’s gonna recognize these secondhand decorations…” He gestured, “…And he’s gonna know that you’re joking at his expense. It’s a mean thing to do on somebody’s birthday…activation day…whatever.”

Chris gave Tina a knowing look. “See?”

Tina rolled her eyes dramatically. “It’s NOT mean. Really, Ben.” She looked seriously at him. “We’re not fucking with him. We just found out that he was activated around the same time that Damien was born, and that’s about the same as a birthday for androids…And, uh…everybody deserves to have a nice birthday party, yeah?”

Ben narrowed his eyes. “And the fact that these are all decorations for first birthdays…as in for babies…has nothing to do with it?”

“I find them to be…apt,” Robert chimed in.

“What’s apt?” Connor asked.

All three cops jumped a foot in the air at the android’s sudden appearance behind Chris. Ben smiled into his coffee mug as Connor looked at their reactions in alarm.

“I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you all,” he apologized sincerely.

“Nnno, we weren’t…” Tina tried to slide between Connor and the view of his desk, but nothing got past the android.

Connor leaned around Tina, glimpsing the sparkly baubles and party things covering his work area.

“What is…going on?”

“What the fuck is all this?” Hank announced himself as well, walking into the office after his partner.

The three cops looked frantically from Connor to Hank, to Ben, and back to Hank. Tina swiveled to Connor, sidestepped out of the way, and threw up her arms.

“Happy Activation Day!”

“Hap…happy activation day…” Chris and Robert repeated, less enthusiastically under Hank’s scrutinizing stare where he stood behind Connor.

If androids could look flabbergasted, Ben thought, then that was the expression on Connor’s face.

“I…” Connor stared at them all, then at the decorations, and back to their faces. “I...didn’t think you all were aware of…that.”

Hank stepped up closer, clapping a hand on Connor’s shoulder, though his eyes never stopped moving from Tina, to Chris, to Robert, and back. “Well, maybe they wanted to surprise you with something nice,” he stressed the word. “We like to remember birthdays around here. We’re not…heartless monsters.” He stared holes into the other three.

Connor was oblivious to Hank’s tone, reaching out and touching the green plastic sprouts on the palm trees.

It had nearly been nine or ten months since the android revolution, since the humans had had to open their eyes and see androids as intelligent life, as people with thoughts and feelings and souls. Yeah, it had taken Ben a little time to adjust to the idea, but it hadn’t been much of a stretch. Androids looked and acted so human before anyway. Deviancy had just made them all the more real. He had been around Connor a bit before he deviated, and even since then, he was a pretty reserved guy. So it was still a little strange to see the RK800 freely express emotion.

That being said, the genuinely touched look that washed over Connor’s face took Ben a bit off guard.

As it did the other three, clearly.

“Thank you,” Connor said, in such a soft tone of voice that he might have been fighting off misty eyes. “I didn’t think anyone besides androids would care about an activation day.”

Hank, it seemed, was done glowering at the others and finally walked around into Connor’s line of sight. “There are a couple of big milestones for human birthdays. Eighteen, twenty one…”

“Sixty-five,” Ben chimed in. “Counting down the days to my retirement already.”

Hank snorted. “But the first birthday is kind of a big deal, kid.”

“I’ll take your word for it, Lieutenant,” Connor remarked. “Honestly, I never expected to experience an anniversary of my activation. As a prototype model, my life expectancy was largely measured in weeks, though some projections used months…but certainly never years.”

“Shit,” Robert exhaled. When Connor looked at him, he lifted his hands. “Nah, I just mean, that’s rough.”

“Well, we’re glad those projections were wrong,” Chris said warmly. “And…yeah, it’s not much.” He nodded to the decorations with some embarrassment. “But we just wanted you to know we know what day it is, and we get that it’s important.”

Connor’s smile started slow, and Ben was used to it tapering off to more of a smirk. Today, though, he cracked a full, wide, honest to the core smile. Collectively, in that moment, all four cops knew that they would kill anyone who tried to ruin this moment. Fortunately, Gavin had the day off.

“So…birthday boy,” Tina chirped, sitting on the corner of the desk and holding a make-believe microphone in her hand. “How does it feel to be one?”

“I don’t…feel any different,” Connor answered, looking to Hank for help. “Is aging supposed to feel different?”

Hank laughed and smacked him on the back again before sitting down. “Not for androids, I don’t guess, but humans? Aging sucks the big one.”

“I got a question,” Robert started. “Humans don’t remember the day that they were born, being, y’know, babies, but androids pretty much have fully functional brains and memory banks on day one, right? So you, like, remember your first day alive?”

Connor blinked. “Every second that I have been active has been recorded and stored, so, theoretically, I do remember every moment of being alive…That includes my…activation itself.”

“That’s wild,” Robert whistled.

“Did you just, like, open your eyes and—“ Tina closed her eyes and then dramatically opened them wide. “Boom, I am Connor?”

Connor narrowed one eye. “I suppose? I was activated in response to a hostage situation in a family’s apartment. It was the first field test of the RK800 series for hostage negotiation and how I would handle high stress situations.”

“Daaamn,” Robert breathed.

“Wait, wait.” Tina snapped her fingers. “I remember that case. Phe-Feli-Phillips family, right? Their android went nuts and…did some messed up shit. That was you that stopped him?”

“I…neutralized the threat and saved the little girl.”

“That’s great, man,” Chris said. “Right out of the gate, huh?”

Connor looked slightly uncomfortable. “I…accomplished my mission. That was all that mattered at the time.”

“You saved Officer Matt Wilson too,” Hank said firmly. “He tells anybody who’ll listen, sometimes even when they don’t.”

Connor seemed to take a little heart from that, but all of the attention suddenly appeared to be a little overwhelming. Ben sipped at his rapidly cooling coffee.

“I don’t know much about activation days, but on human birthdays, the person gets to choose how they celebrate. They can go all out or do very little at all,” he suggested. “You’re not bound by any social convention here, Connor.”

Connor nodded, and Hank sent Ben an appreciative look.

“Not sure we can top Successful Hostage Negotiation,” Tina chuckled. “But, hey…we got a surfboard candle!”

Connor smiled again. “This is wonderful and more than I ever expected. Thank you all. I wouldn’t want to attempt to ‘top’ the day of my activation, but…not getting shot would be nice.”

If there’d been a balloon nearby, that comment would have popped it.

“Shot?” Chris gave an uncomfortable, halting chuckle.

Connor looked passively at him. “The android holding the little girl hostage gave what I assume was meant to be a warning shot. Unfortunately, his aim was a little close and struck my arm.”

“You got shot…the day you were born?” Tina gawked. “Holy fuck…”

Hank leaned back in his seat, just to get the momentum to sit forward and stand back up. “So,” he changed the direction of the conversation. “You plan on subjecting yourself to the customary singing of the happy birthday song?”

Connor’s eyes widened. “No, nonono, that’s not—“ He waved both hands at his sides.

Tina took a deep breath. “HAPPY—“

Robert clamped a hand around her mouth, and she squawked, smacking him away. Once free, she huffed but didn’t resume singing.

“Connor,” Captain Fowler’s voice interrupted the scene.

Hank rolled his eyes as he approached, and Ben snorted. Fowler had let this go on longer than he had expected him to, having so many officers crowding around one desk and chit-chatting like this.

Tina, Chris, and Robert immediately scattered like feathers in the wind, and Ben followed suit enough, drifting back to his desk but keeping a clear view of Fowler approaching Connor’s desk.

“Captain,” Connor greeted. “If this is distracting,” he glanced at his trussed up workstation, “I can take it down. They were just—“

Fowler raised a hand, and Connor quieted. “Well, they messed up. Big time.” He glared back at Tina, Chris, and Robert, who all slouched in their seats, focused on their paperwork.

“Jeffrey…” Hank started.

Fowler planted his feet and stared back at Connor. “You’re new to all this, so you probably didn’t realize it. Not your fault, but don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes.” He drew his hand from behind his back, revealing a simple, long black box. “Luckily, some of us are professionals who know you don’t forget to get somebody a gift on their birthday.”

Ben choked on his coffee, covering it with a stifled cough. Tina, Chris, and Robert all deflated in relief, but they quickly perked up at the idea of the captain giving a gift to an android. Connor looked just as puzzled.

“Sir?”

Hank twisted around and looked back at Ben questioningly. Ben lifted his shoulders in a shrug, and Hank frowned, turning back around with a curious stare.

Fowler offered the box again, and Connor automatically took it. All of them watched with intrigue as Connor gently tugged the lid off the box, setting it aside and pulling out the object inside.

It was a simple name plate, identical in style to the name plates on every officer’s desk in the bullpen. The plain font read: DET. CONNOR.

Connor stared at the name plate for a long, unbroken moment. When he didn’t raise his eyes or say anything, Fowler put his hands on his hips.

“Yeah, it’s way overdue. Should have gotten this thing months ago. If you ever register for a surname, we can reorder it.” He waved a hand at his side.

“Thank you, Captain.” It was almost whispered.

Connor’s social protocol program seemed to take over and force him to lift his head and look his superior officer in the eye when speaking to him, since his eyes were very wide and very wet as he did so.

Fowler didn’t break stride, nodding once. “You earned it. Happy Activation Day, Detective.”


End file.
